If we read Lolita's story through the lens of this mythological history, we can discern several archetypal parallels that enhance our understanding of what Nabokov meant by saying that his nymphet was "mythical.

Simulating an ignorance that conveniently elicits "the sign of the nymphet," Humbert draws Dolores into his own area of weakness (pedophilia) in order to "make a game of' her weakness (a pre-teen penchant for sexual experimentation), a game "with its own rules.

Conversely, Humbert Humbert, prisoner of history that he is--as much as a heartbroken emigre as by the tautology of alliance and filiation inhering in his own name--is obsessed with the very figure of transience, the nymphet Lolita.

The main characters include a frumpy wife whose husband is having an affair with a nymphet called Peanut and an ex-husband who still loves his former wife but is now with a much younger partner with a baby.

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